We don't know what's weirder - the fact that board games are the new hot target of Hollywood nostalgia-whoring, or that these upcoming game movies are tapping science fiction tropes for inspiration. What if this trend continues to snowball in the years to come? Join io9 as we ponder a creatively bankrupt future in which some of our favorite auteurs have put a scifi spin on otherwise plotless childhood games.

5.) Darren Aronofsky's Pac-Man

Genre: Paranormal noirPlot: Guillaume Homme-Pac is a mentally-ill pensioner who lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He is a recluse and only leaves the apartment to purchase anti-psychotic medication which he hoards using a number of forged prescriptions. He consumes near toxic amounts of these pills nightly, for every evening he is visited by four mysterious ghosts - Arnaud, Patrice, Benoît, and Clyde - who chase Monsieur Homme-Pac through the diseased labyrinths of his own mind. Although the medication keeps the apparitions at bay, it is eroding Homme-Pac's health and sanity.

Monsieur Homme-Pac's ex-wife Josette lives down the hallway from him. She still loves and cares for Guillaume, but his delusions placed an insurmountable strain on their marriage. Madame Homme-Pac is never seen without her trademark vermilion Givenchy beret. Josette supplies her husband with the prescriptions, but she hates herself for doing so. Unbeknownst to Guillaume, she too is haunted by four ghosts - Inès, Paulette, Babette, and Sue.

JOSETTE: I heard you last night. I heard you yelling again. About the maze, the blue walls. I heard it all.

GUILLAUME: [impassively] Why were you up at that hour?

JOSETTE: [ pauses and looks away] You woke me. I brought you this.

[She foists a brown grocery bag into GUILLAUME'S hands. It is filled with fruit. He picks up a box of Super Pretzels that is oddly on top. He eyeballs it, face blank.]

JOSETTE: They were on sale.

GUILLAUME: Food will not make them go away.

JOSETTE: When will they go away?

GUILLAUME: When I drill a hole in my head. When I spiral into nothing. When someone trips on the plug.

[He slams the door.]

4.) J.J. Abrams' Candy Land

Genre: Time-travel espionage thrillerPlot: On the day of her high school graduation, Threnody Crisco receives a letter from her father, who died before she was born. It turns out he is still alive and the king of the Kan-Di, a time-traveling race of hyper-evolved homo sapiens who have been stranded in the past. Even worse, he and his royal court are being vivisected in Compound 47, a high-tech prison secretly owned by Japanese confectionery conglomerate Tagruato.The corporation is experimenting on the Kan-Di and attempting to reverse-engineering Threnody's father's chrono-jumping beacon, "The Red Gumdrop."

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In addition to saving her dad, Threnody must defeat her duplicitous uncle Lord Cassius Lucreze (who exiled King Kan-Di to the past) and her mother, the supercilious Queen Frostine. Little does Threnody know that Lord Lucreze has been plotting against her for years. Her boyfriend, University of Michigan frosh Gus Glopert, is actually a shape-shifting assassin and Lucreze's #2, General Glopius.

Genre: Post-apocalyptic rumination among the ruinsPlot: In an unfathomable future, only two beings exist: X and O, immortal god-kings driven insane by technology and solitude. They divide the ruined world between, partitioning the globe into nations of which they are the sole citizens. X and O are deathless, and this pointless war game is the only pastime they know. They have forgotten their names, family, and scruples. Like Cain and Abel, they only know the barbarity that is the pith of civilization.

X and O continue this Manichean frivolity until the sun supernovas. Only then will Earth finally become a proper Hell, baptized by fire.

Sample Scene:
[X and O stare into each other's eyes. They stand in burnt chaparral.]

X: X.

O: O.

X: X.

O: O.

[A GRIZZLY BEAR ambles by. It dies of significance.]

X: X.

[THE SUN supernovas.]

2.) Paul Verhoeven's Snakes and Ladders

Genre: Erotic bio-horrorPlot: In a dystopian Detroit, a strange phenomenon occurs every night. Strange golden ladders materialize on the street, beckoning men to climb up. Those who have lived virtuously are rewarded with a naked gambol with a three-breasted woman; those men who have committed injustices encounter a hungry three-headed hydra, who vomits their bones onto the boulevards below. Detectives Quaid Hauser and Malone Nomi must end the creature's deadly feast. But whereas Detective Hauser seeks to crack the beast's seemingly arbitrary moral code - indeed, she condemns decent men for their childhood rascalities - the cybernetic Detective Nomi has but one imperative: bug hunt.

Genre: Slumber party space odysseyPlot: Earth is under the thrall of the so-called "POG Tribunal," which consists of three despotic demon races: the Ankylosaurus-like "Pineapples," the mottled, vampiric "Oranges," and the "Guavas," who look like exactly like humans but smell vaguely of fruit punch. The POGs have barricaded our planet behind a impenetrable force field and are mind-wiping all survivors for use as domestics. Earth has only one hope to break this barricade: the starship Slammer, which is piloted by a trio of brassy sorceresses known as the Furies. The Furies are perpetually accompanied by their janitor, Ralston, who suffers from psychosomatic erectile dysfunction.